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Saturday, November 28, 2015

Numbers 6

It strikes me that there are many categories of instruction, far more than the moral and the ceremonial. Even in our own culture we have regulations, policies, rules, written and unwritten, conventions, traditions, and also laws of many different types. We don't think of law as instruction, but it is also that. Torah comes from a word meaning throw, cast or shoot. The net could be cast quite wide for a set of things for which Torah is used in Scripture. It's not all 'law' in the sense of legal or ethical.

The first part of Numbers 6 seems very like the orderly regulations of a procedure manual. I suspect too some technical terms that may have to change from this first foray these regulations about Nazirites (נזר nzr).

At the end of these regulations is the priestly prayer, one of the more famous passages of Tanach, a prayer that may be reflected in Psalm 67 as shown in the following table. Verse 2 of Psalm 67 uses four of the words of the blessing. The table also highlights the frame of Psalm 67, the keyword, bless, that begins and ends it.

All the days of the vow of its consecration no razor will traverse on its head,
until are fulfilled the days in which it will consecrate self to Yahweh, and become holy and neglect the growing of the hair on its head.

כָּל־יְמֵ֥י הַזִּיר֖וֹ לַיהוָ֑ה
עַל־נֶ֥פֶשׁ מֵ֖ת לֹ֥א יָבֹֽא

6

All the days of its consecration to Yahweh,
to a being that is dead it will not come.

And it will bring near an oblation for Yahweh, one young he-lamb yearling, complete, for a burnt offering,
and one young she-lamb yearling, complete, for a sin offering, and one ram, complete, for peace offerings,

Then the Nazirite will shave, at the door of the tent of engagement, the head of its consecration,
and take and give the hair of the head of its consecration to the fire that is under the offering of the peace offerings.

And the priest will take the boiled arm from the ram and one cake of unleavened bread from the woven pannier and one wafer of unleavened bread,
he will give onto the palms of the Nazirite, after its consecration is shaved.

And the priest will elevate them a wave offering in the presence of Yahweh. It is holy for the priest over the torso of the wave offering and over the leg of the wave offering.
And after, a Nazirite may imbibe wine.

This is the instruction for a Nazirite who has vowed its oblation for Yahweh per its consecration besides what its hand will realize,
According to the mandate of its vow that it vowed, so it does, per the instruction for its consecration.